Automotive

If you're a BMW i3 owner and live in California, you could get paid over $1,000 directly from BMW to not charge your electric vehicle during peak hours. It's part of a trail program that sees the car company teaming up with PG&E, California's utility provider, to try to offset heavy demand on the power grids. i3 drivers can basically be compensated for putting off their charging by an hour or more.

Tesla owners who are eager for the next big software update for their electric vehicles may not have much longer to wait. The next update, expected to bring the software to version 7, will enable highway auto-steering functionality and automatic parallel parking, and is almost ready for release. This comes the CEO himself, Elon Musk, via several posts on Twitter early this morning. No firm release date was given, and there's still one last issue they need to prepare for, but if all goes well we should be downloading the new software soon.

Tesla will soon begin a referral program for their electric vehicles instead of continuing to fight their up-hill battle with US car dealers. They'll continue to open new stores, for sure, but depending on how well this referral program goes, suggested CEO Elon Musk this week, perhaps not so many stores will be opened as originally planned. Word of mouth, after all, is one of Tesla's strongest tools for sales of vehicles, especially in states where sales through Tesla stores are not yet legal.

Volkswagen has launched its new Modular Infotainment Platform, MIB-II, with the first cars with the new touchscreen head-units arriving in dealerships complete with Android Auto and CarPlay. The new technology, announced at CES 2015, switches to a more modular approach, as well as baking in more apps and wearables. It's an ambitious roll-out, too, with VW planning to put MIB-II into all but a handful of its 2016 models.

While the Frankfurt Motor Show isn't until September, Italian manufacturer Ferrari decided not to wait until then to reveal the 2016 488 Spider. As the convertible version of the Ferrari 488 GTB, introduced back in February, the 488 Spider shares the same turbocharged V8 engine as its coupe sibling, offering 661-horsepower and a top speed of 203 mph. With the hard top on, the Spider may also look nearly identical to the coupe, but with its stunning design, that's far from a bad thing.

In May, Honda revealed plans to launch an updated CRF1000L Africa Twin motorcycle built upon the foundation laid by the original model. This week it made good on its promise, unveiling a better look at the upcoming motorcycle alongside additional technical details. Honda plans to show off the new Africa Twin later on this year sometime in Europe. Per Honda's original announcement, the bike will be launching in Europe first this autumn. “Several versions” of the model will be available, as well as four color options. Price will start at €12,100.

The company behind the Gogoro Smartscooter announces their intent to ship pre-orders as of this week. Customers that ordered the Gogoro Smartscooter earlier this year on pre-order can expect their shipments to begin as early as tomorrow. Just so long as they live in Taipei. As for the rest of the world - not just yet. First cities will need official "GoStation" recharging points, complete with plug-ins to service the machines. Then we can be on our way to fully electric scooter cities!

This isn't the first time Uber vehicles have ever delivered ice cream. It is the first time Uber Denver specifically planned out an elaborate way to bring the entire city their fix on a 90-degree day in both Colorado Springs and Fort Collins. While you'd expect that having ice cream hand-delivered to wherever you happen to be in a city wouldn't be cheap, this delivery comes at a mint. Uber is delivering "Little Man Ice Cream" only, a kind of hand-made ice cream that costs $20 per 4-ounce serving.

Later this year you'll be baring witness to the most striking bullet train ever designed. With colors and design based on the Anime-sourced bot by the name of Evangelion Unit-01, this bullet train will pay tribute to the 20th anniversary of the Neon Evangelion series. This train will be outfitted with its brightly colored design from this fall until March of 2017, and will be running from Osaka to Fukuoaka Japan. At this time only concept paintings exist in the wild - the real deal is coming soon.

Following this week's news about a Jeep vehicle that was hacked from a remote location while driving down the road, parent company FiatChrysler Automobiles (FCA) have announced a recall affecting 1.4 million cars in the US. The recall is obviously over potential hole in the security of the software running on the vehicles. In the Jeep incident, which was covered in a report from Wired, the hackers managed to send signals to car's dashboard over the internet while it was traveling at 70 mph.